ChannelTube #

Project: Apple TV YouTube App

Building a personal, family-friendly tvOS app that lets people browse and watch videos from a whitelisted set of YouTube creators.

Architecture:

• Backend: Node.js (TypeScript, hono ). Maintains a channel whitelist, stores it in database, and uses yt-dlp to resolve stream URLs on demand. Exposes a REST API.
• tvOS App: Native Swift + SwiftUI + AVPlayerViewController. Browsing UI with LazyVGrid, streams resolved lazily at playback time via the backend.

Key decisions:

• Native Swift chosen over React Native (better tvOS support, simpler architecture, stronger agentic code generation results)
• Planning to build agentically
• yt-dlp URLs resolved at play time (not cached) due to expiry

Notes:

• Personal/family use only (yt-dlp ToS grey area, low practical risk)
• yt-dlp can be slow on Pi; UI should handle loading state gracefully
• Keep yt-dlp updated frequently